A study by John Archer reviewed meta-analyses on psychological sex differences, so we're talking about hundreds of studies. I will highlight the largest differences; those with means that are at least eight-tenths of a standard deviation apart. For the non-stats people among us, that is a very big gap.
Largest sexually dimorphic psychological traits (difference in sd units)
Homicide 2.54
Rape 2.32
Mate choice--Age difference 2.00
Violent computer-game use 1.41
Occupational interests 1.39
Systemizing 1.21
Pain tolerance 1.17
Fear in real-world situations -1.16
Violent crime 1.11
Engineering interests 1.11
Partner homicide 1.06
People-things distinction -.93
Empathy -.91
Weapons use .88
Sexual v. emotional jealousy .87
Revenge .83
Among the traits that Archer included, there is no bigger difference between the sexes than violence. Men are the violent sex and love it much more than women (i.e., violent video game use).
Male superiority in visuospatial ability is talked about a lot, and there is a difference, but it is not large enough to make the list. Interest is where the big gap exists. Men are much more likely to have an interest in engineering, making systems, and working with things over people.
While I've admired my wife's ability to suffer the pains of childbirth repeatedly, experimental research indicates that men can tolerate pain much better than women. Women are much more fearful of being harmed in real-world situations. This might figure into male willingness to get his ass kicked in a fight.
Women are the empathetic sex. They are much less likely to desire revenge. They get jealous about their man having romantic attachments, while men are much more concerned about sexual betrayal. Women desire older, resource-possessing men, while men desire younger women who have lots of reproductive potential.
These sex differences are what evolutionary theory would predict: men compete with each other, sometimes violently and vengefully, for access to mates.
There must have been benefits for women to be more sensitive to the feelings of others--effective childcare comes to mind--and men must have benefitted from a greater orientation to the analysis of systems. Strategic thinking for hunting and war?
UPDATE: Archer neglects to include perhaps the largest psychological sex difference: males are overwhelming attracted to females, while females are overwhelmingly attracted to males. The exceptions are noise. And the evolutionary reason is obvious.
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Are the values Z-values (SD units)? This confused me. He mentions d-values and makes it sound like that's a widely accepted sociologist metric.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised there is only a small male preference for chastity although he doesn't specify for short or long term pair bondings.
Also, I think "age difference" must mean positive age difference i.e. older partner. If they checked for negative age difference i.e. younger partner they’d likely find the data skewed towards men.
ReplyDeleteAhhh, Cohen's d is in SD units - the calculation "normalizes" SD I guess. So they are Z-scores.
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